Principal Investigator(s):Latzer, Barry, The City University of New York. John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Cauthen, James N.G., The City University of New York. John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Summary:

Despite public controversy over the length of death penalty
appeals, little empirical work has been done on the time allocated to
the capital appeals process. The purpose of this study was to perform
a multistate empirical analysis of the time expended in direct appeals
of capital cases. The researchers included decisions from 14 states
that they believed to be representative of the 37 states that have
enforceable death penalty laws. For each of the 14 states included in
the study, the re... (more info)

Despite public controversy over the length of death penalty
appeals, little empirical work has been done on the time allocated to
the capital appeals process. The purpose of this study was to perform
a multistate empirical analysis of the time expended in direct appeals
of capital cases. The researchers included decisions from 14 states
that they believed to be representative of the 37 states that have
enforceable death penalty laws. For each of the 14 states included in
the study, the researchers examined every capital case decided on
direct appeal by the courts of last resort between the dates January
1, 1992, and December 31, 2002. The researchers developed a case
database by examining a variety of sources. For each of the 1,676
cases in the multistate database, the research team collected time
consumption data for each of the following five phases of the direct
appeal process: (1) the postsentence stage, (2) the preparation stage,
(3) the argument stage, (4) the decision stage, and (5) the supreme
court stage. Variables include state, case characteristics, court
opinion variables, dates, and time consumption variables.

A downloadable version of data for this study is available however, certain identifying information in the downloadable version may have been masked or edited to protect respondent privacy. Additional data not included in the downloadable version are available in a restricted version of this data collection. For more information about the differences between the downloadable data and the restricted data for this study, please refer to the codebook notes section of the PDF codebook. Users interested in obtaining restricted data must complete and sign a Restricted Data Use Agreement, describe the research project and data protection plan, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Dataset(s)

Study Description

Citation

Latzer, Barry, and James N.G. Cauthen. MULTISTATE ANALYSIS OF TIME CONSUMPTION IN CAPITAL APPEALS, 1992-2002. ICPSR21680-v1. New York, NY: The City University of New York [producer], 2007. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-03-25. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR21680.v1

Universe:
All capital cases resolved on direct appeal by the court
of last resort (COLR) in 14 states between January 1, 1992, and
December 31, 2002. The 14 states are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

Methodology

Study Purpose:
Despite public controversy over the length of
death penalty appeals, little empirical work has been done on the time
allocated to the capital appeals process. The purpose of this study
was to perform a multistate empirical analysis of the capital appeals
process.

Study Design:

This study focused on the time taken to process
direct appeals of capital cases in 14 states. These direct appeals are
the first stage in the capital appeals process. The researchers
included decisions from 14 states that they believed to be
representative of the 37 states that have enforceable death penalty
laws. For each of the 14 states included in the study, the researchers
examined every capital case decided on direct appeal by the courts of
last resort between the dates January 1, 1992, and December 31,
2002.

The researchers developed a case database by examining a variety
of sources. First, they turned to the clerk's office of each state
court of last resort. Practically all of the offices had electronic
docket control systems that identified capital appeals. Second, to
confirm completeness, the researchers searched the online legal
databases, Westlaw and Lexis, for all years of the study. In addition,
for cases decided through 1995, they reviewed the data on direct
appeal produced by Liebman, et al. (2002). Once all the cases were
identified, the clerks' offices provided, either electronically or
though docket sheets, the dates for the completion of various steps in
each appeal. Trial court sentencing dates for each case were obtained
from the state supreme court clerks' offices, the trial court clerks'
offices, appellate briefs, or through public information available
over the World Wide Web.

Thus, for each of the 1,676 cases in the multistate database, the
research team collected time consumption data for each of the
following five phases of the direct appeal process:

the postsentence stage,

the preparation stage,

the argument stage,

the decision stage, and

the supreme court stage.

Sample:

The sample selected to represent the universe consists
of 1,676 cases. The researchers included in the study decisions from
14 states that they believed to be representative of the 37 states
that have enforceable death penalty laws. For state selection, the
research team relied initially on the work of Lofquist (2002).
Lofquist classified states in terms of their application of
the death penalty as measured by three criteria: the number of death
sentences, the number of reversals, and the number of executions. He
then established six categories of states, which he called
Abolitionist, Inactive, Active, Symbolic, Inefficient, and
Aggressive.

The researchers included in the study states from each of
Lofquist's categories except the Abolitionist and the Inactive. The
12 Abolitionist states (13, if one includes New York) were excluded
for the reason that they did not provide for capital punishment. The
researchers also rejected the six Inactive states because the
researchers concluded that they did not impose enough death sentences
to permit fruitful study. The following states were chosen:

Three Active states - Kentucky, New Jersey, and Washington

Three Symbolic states - Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee

Four Inefficient states - Arizona, Georgia, Florida, and North
Carolina

Four Aggressive states - Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, and
Virginia

Weight:
None.

Data Source:

Data were obtained from the following sources:

The clerk's office of each state court of last resort

Online legal databases (Westlaw and Nexis)

Data on direct appeal produced by Liebman, et al. (2002)

The state supreme court clerks' offices

The trial court clerks' offices

Appelate briefs

World Wide Web

Description of Variables:
Variables include state, case characteristics,
court opinion variables, dates, and time consumption variables. Case
characteristics include case number, case title, case citation
information (volume of reporter in which decision of state court of
last resort reported, reporter in which decision of state court of
last resort reported, and page number of reporter on which decision
begins), intermediate appellate court (IAC) review, rule/statute
directed to reduce processing time of capital appeals, scope of
review, state court of last resort decision to affirm or reverse trial
court decision, and United States Supreme Court decision. Court
opinion variables include number of concurring opinions, number of
dissenting opinions, page length of majority opinion, and page length
of all opinions. Date variables include capital sentencing date,
notice of appeal filing date, last brief filing date, oral argument
date, state court of last resort decision date (both excluding
proportionality decision date for New Jersey cases and using
proportionality decision date for New Jersey cases), and United States
Supreme Court decision date. Time consumption variables include
sentence date to state court of last resort decision date, state court
of last resort decision date to United States Supreme Court decision
date, sentence date to United States Supreme Court decision date,
sentence date to notice of appeal filing date, sentence date to last
brief filing date, notice of appeal date to last brief filing date,
last brief filing date to oral argument date, oral argument date to
state court of last resort decision date, notice of appeal date to
state court of last resort decision date, and notice of appeal date to
state court of last resort decision date.

Presence of Common Scales:
None.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: